"Sorry," he shrugged, trying not to smile. "Don't worry, it's only going to be another couple of days."
"Couple of days?" Poppy's voice went up an octave.
"Tomorrow," he corrected, taking pity on her. He was used to roughing it-pitching a tent to sleep in the yard on some of his projects and living off the grid on vacation-but clearly, Poppy needed her creature comforts. "I promise, hot water will be back tomorrow. Hey, it's not so bad," he added. "Cold showers are good for the circulation. And it looks like you could use a little cooling off."
Poppy grabbed her towel tighter. Her cheeks were flushed, and she was sexy as hell, her hair falling down around her bare shoulders. "What I could use is some peace and quiet to get my work done."
"And I could use two weeks on a boat in the Caribbean," Cooper drawled, knowing it would turn her pink cheeks even redder with rage. "But as the Stones said, we can't always get what we want."
He turned and left her in the bathroom before he was tempted to do something he'd regret. Like kiss the mouth that was spluttering insults behind him.
Now that would really heat things up around here.
6
Poppy decided it was better to take herself far away from Cooper and the construction site, before she picked up one of those hammers and did some damage to more than just the walls. She knew the hot water issue wasn't a big deal-she wasn't some kind of diva who couldn't make it through the day without luxuriating in a bubble bath. No, it was the look on Cooper's handsome face that made her blood boil: that infuriating smirk that got her riled up, until she was just about ready to explode.
Note to self: Cooper Nicholson was a hazard to her blood pressure. And her creativity. Because even once she'd braved the ice-cold shower, dressed, and thrown her laptop in her bag to head into town, Poppy still couldn't get focused to write.
She took a sip of tea and let out a sigh. The coffee shop she'd seen yesterday was the perfect writing spot: a bright, modern café just off the town square, equipped with comfortable couches, cozy nooks, and plenty of outlets for her power cord. She'd been camped out there for most of the day, but how many words had she produced?
Exactly zero.
Well, two, if you counted "chapter one," but Poppy knew that wasn't going to cut it with her editor back home.
She looked around the room in search of inspiration. She'd already updated her author blog, checked twitter, and set up boards on Pinterest for all of her characters, so she was all out of time-wasting tactics. Unless she checked Facebook again-
No. Focus. She had everything riding on this book. She couldn't let her readers down.
Which was the problem. Poppy had never suffered writer's block before. She loved to write, and even on her worst days, she'd always managed to get words on the page. After all, it was only a first draft, and everyone knew first drafts were made for fixing. But somehow it felt different this time. This was the final book in the series, the ultimate happily-ever-after. She and her readers had spent years with these characters, watching them laugh, and cry, and fall in love, and she couldn't bear the thought that anyone would close the book disappointed and wishing for more.
Not that there would be a book if she didn't find a way to break this block and get writing. But every time she forced her hands to the keyboard and started typing, the same fears bubbled up in her chest.
What did she know about love?
It had never held her back before. Somehow, her own inexperienced heart never seemed to matter for the other books. She was writing something to believe in, a vision of the love she wanted for herself, as if by writing it down, making that dream real, she could somehow conjure it out of thin air. Even when she was dating Owen, that future vision of love remained, promising in the distance, helping fuel the last book she'd turned in, just the week before he'd proposed.
And she hadn't written another word since.
It didn't take a genius to realize the two were connected. The wrecked wedding plans, her break-up, and Poppy's current writer's block. But it didn't make sense: she'd turned her life upside down because she believed in a true love like the ones she'd written, but now that she had distance, her fears were back in force.
What if the love in her books were just fiction?
What if she'd thrown her shot at happiness away on a fantasy?
What if, after everything, Poppy would always be alone?
She gulped. That was the worst fear of all, the one that kept her up late into the night. The lonely vast horizon, years passing one after the other, just as empty as the one before-